Zhu Jiaming: The Digital Economy and the Non-Homogenous Era — NFTs, Virtual Demand, and Virtual Supply
来Source ｜Digital Asset Research CIDA Layout |Wang Jilong Yan
Editor's note:
On March 26, 2022, ForeChain and 01 Think Tank hosted the “Global Trends in Digital Collections and Innovation in China - Global Digital Collections Annual Report Conference”. The Hengqin Digital Finance Research Institute is the academic supporter of the conference. Zhu Jiaming, Chairman of the Research Institute's Academic and Technical Committee, delivered a speech. The title was “The Digital Economy and the Era of Non-Homogeneity - NFTs, Virtual Demand, and Virtual Supply”, advocating the popularization of NFTs.“Everyone can create NFTs, and everyone can be satisfied with non-homogenous needs, then there is hope for NFTs.”
The digital economy and the era of heterogeneity — NFTs, virtual demand, and virtual supply
Source: Nifty Gateway
I chose a background today. It's an NFT product that went on sale on December 4 last year for a price of $91.8 million. It's called The Merge in English. What everyone sees in this work is just a few balls. The publisher of the work is digital artist Murat Pak. He first created a token, ASH, and then released this NFT. More than 20,000 people participated in the purchase of the work, and the final sale price of the work reached US$91.8 million. The Merge includes a range of characteristics of NFTs.However, its most fundamental characteristic is that it has created a unique and unique virtual creative supply, which has given rise to some people's original virtual needs. Combined with blockchain-supported smart contracts and tokens, it has finally realized transactions.All in all, this is a typical NFT case.
Quantum static images
Source: Kevin McCoy
It is widely acknowledged that Quantum (Quantum), which was released in New York in 2014, was the first NFT. The author is artist Kevin McCoy, and it has been eight years since then. However, it was 2021 that NFTs entered the public eye and attracted the attention and participation of all sectors.
Here are a few of my basic observations and thoughts about NFTs:
1. Existence is the foundation of NFTs, and NFTs are an expression of existence. The premise of so-called NFTs is NF (non-fungible), that is, non-homogenization. This world is made up of various non-homogenized material and spiritual beings. The phenomenon of non-homogenization in the real world is everywhere. The German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) famously said: “No two leaves are exactly the same.” Each person has a unique life course. It could even be said that every life is a non-homogenous performance art. Therefore, existence is a non-homogenized “set”.Therefore, existence and non-homogenization are equivalent, is the premise of NFTs. Ancient agricultural society, economic behavior, and even financial and monetary behavior were all non-qualitative. It can be said that non-homogeneity is a basic characteristic of the existence of human civilizations since ancient times.
2. Homogenization is a trend in human civilization that coexists with non-homogenization. In the course of human civilization, there is still a strong pursuit of homogenization. This is true in the field of thought, spirit, and values, as well as in economic activity and social activity. In the industrial age, homogenization became the mainstream of economic activity. The non-homogenized handicraft industry before the industrial age was replaced by homogenized products produced by large machines. The essence of large industries is to pursue low costs, high profits, and marginal benefits, and requires standardization and scale. People need to gather to work in the factory. Because of homogenization, both micro and macroeconomics can be quantified.In short, there is no industrial revolution without homogenization; the industrial age is an era of high homogenization.As a result, people showed homogenization in clothing, food, lodging, and travel. Consumerism is based on homogenized consumerism; advertising is for the demand for homogenization; famous brands are a result of homogenization; mass media is also the homogenization of intangible products. It can be said that the industrial age is an era dominated by homogenization.
3. The information society promotes the return of non-homogenization. Because of digital technology, the digital economy and the information society, people have begun digital transformation, that is, they have begun to transform and return from homogenization to non-homogenization. Because of digital technology, people can break through the physical and physical limitations of the structure of the industrial age, and people's imagination and creativity can flourish. In the information society, everyone is a producer, creator, and consumer of information. Information products expressed in immaterial form are not needed, nor are they likely to be homogenized. As a result, the demand and supply of the information society is no longer a quantifiable demand and supply.In fact, in all spiritual fields, supply comes from creation, and creation stimulates demand.For example, Hollywood products create market demand, not the other way around.
4. Blockchain and smart contracts, which are the core features of NFTs, have been reflected in value transactions through tokens. An NFT is NF plus T, and T is a token (token). Because of tokens, any non-homogenized existence gains value. Of course, just as non-homogenization isn't a new thing, tokens aren't entirely new. However, the wonderful thing is that the NFT token itself is diverse and is a digital token that rejects uniqueness. For example, the token I mentioned earlier that supports The Merge is ASH, and the history of ASH is only a few months before The Merge.However, the significance of NFT is not only to achieve a combination of non-homogenized products and tokens, but also because it incorporates Internet, blockchain, and smart contract technology, and can also achieve its value through digital trading platforms.
5. The scarcity of NFTs is an early phenomenon. If scarcity is defined as an important characteristic of NFTs, it's probably misleading. If NFTs are scarce, it means that every specific NFT product is probably unique and scarce. Traditional economics is based on the assumption that economic resources are scarce. If NFTs are defined as a form of digital economy, it is difficult to say that the resources supporting the NFT economy are also scarce, and it is further deduced that the NFT economy is a scarce economy.In fact, NFT resources are not specific material resources; not only are they not scarce, but they are also extremely abundant, and can be continuously reproduced.Therefore, if you think that NFTs are scarce, it means a specific NFT, or an early stage characteristic of NFTs.
6. NFTs are at a stage where both total demand and total supply are growing explosively. The current NFT market is limited in size, and prices fluctuate drastically, and its market value lacks stability. In particular, certain NFT products are clearly being hyped up and manipulated. This shows that the demand and supply of NFTs have not entered a historical stage where they tend to balance.The deep virtual demand triggered by NFTs is the first intangible demand in human history, and it is still in a state of chaos and obscurity.Because of this, some specific NFT products may generate higher prices than people think, a demand almost stimulated by art auctions.
7. NFTs have an intrinsic logic of popularization. In the digital age, with the development of digital technology, especially the advent of smartphones, the public has the ability to simultaneously create non-homogeneous resources, create and consume non-homogenous products, and it happens anytime, anywhere. In fact, Douyin is a base for the production of non-homogenous resources. Therefore, NFTs need to step down from the “altar”, integrate with people's lives, and achieve popularization. In short, NFTs must be turned into an industry or ecosystem where the public can produce, buy, and trade.Everyone can create NFTs, and everyone can be satisfied with non-homogenized needs, then there is hope for NFTs.Therefore, it is necessary to have more and more convenient platforms for creating and trading NFTs to reduce the price and transaction costs of NFTs. Of course, the popularization of NFTs does not preclude the niche of specific NFT products.
8. NFTs have the potential for industrialization. NFTs have now formed categories, including: electronic arts, music, video games, sports moments, trading cards, memes, domain names, electronic fashion, Twitter tweets, etc. Obviously, each of the above fields may develop into an industry, and then form an NFT industry system. The foreseeable NFT industry has at least these characteristics: (1) based on digital technology, closely integrated with computing power and algorithms; (2) using digital finance as a medium; (3) high level of public participation; (4) driven by imagination and creativity; (4) achieving distributed storage and distributed energy; (5) incorporating carbon footprint management, low carbon, and reducing material resource consumption; (6) NFTs have indivisible and indivisible duality, dividing ownership of NFTs.The industrialization of NFTs will trigger a major economic revolution.NFTs need to go beyond being limited to art, music, and sports, because an idea, an idea, and a discovery may all be the first driving force for the NFT industry.
In the US, the majority of people who buy and sell NFTs are millennials
Source: Morning Consult
Source: HitBTC.com
What would happen? This will cause most NFT products in the future to be unimpressive, causing people to quickly enter a stage of aesthetic fatigue. As a result, the NFT market for certain arts or cultures, which is now thought to continue to grow, will decline. Even works by Qi Baishi, Picasso's works are not limitless in their appeal and market. Therefore, the demand for non-homogenized NFTs will continue to drive people's imagination and creativity.
epilogue
Currently, NFTs are still in their early stages of development, and are mainly reflected in the field of art products — although they have a market, hype, and value, they all fall under various forms of testing. However, NFTs have ushered in a new era of various non-homogenous beings that people pursue and appreciate. It is completely different from the industrial age where homogenization is the most mainstream. In other words, the current digital transformation is the transformation from homogenization in the industrial age to non-homogenization in the information age, and this historical process has just begun, and NFTs are the forerunners of this historical process. In particular, in the non-homogenized social and economic movement represented by NFTs, there are materialized NFTs. For example, anyone who has used a bicycle, a backpack, and a book can become an NFT; however, the more important NFTs are bound to be spiritual, ideological, and artistic. A scientific discovery and theorem, a new idea, will all become an NFT. The measure of the value of an NFT will be the amount of imagination and creativity in it. Therefore, because of NFTs, the metaphysical and metaphysical concerns of human intelligence will enter a new realm.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the metaverse and NFTs are interdependent: the metaverse will provide space for multi-dimensional development of NFTs, and the metaverse will also be richer and more fulfilling due to NFTs.
[Endnote]
[1] The founder of the “meme” concept was Richard Dawkins (1941 -), who first coined the term meme, whose core meaning is an extension beyond genes. This concept was later applied to disciplines such as psychology and sociology, and was also used by some scholars to describe the mechanism of cultural transmission. Genes, which are genetic factors, are cultural genetic factors, and also evolve through processes of replication (imitation), variation, and environmental selection. For example, ideas (memes) in the human brain are copied to the brains of different people through imitation or learning. However, the copied idea is not exactly the same as the original idea, so it mutates. These similar but different ideas compete with each other during dissemination, generating different content that affects their ability to spread, so there is a phenomenon similar to natural selection. However, the current concept of memes is not widely accepted, and there are still debates about the definition or species of memes, and whether they are sufficient to explain the process of cultural change.
It's not the general public that supports the NFT market; it's mostly millennials. Millennials are more motivated and able to participate in the NFT trade than Gen Z. Why are millennials the biggest buyers of NFTs? Because they really are the first generation of humans to generate virtual needs.
